Back in January, I wrote about what I call the Facebook "sharing trap" where you are persuaded to like a seemingly harmless photo that is part of a scam. It was one of my most shared columns, probably because so many people were surprised there's evil lurking behind a cute puppy. If anything, the sharing trap, which is really called like-farming, has become more dangerous. If you're scratching your head, let me set the scene. We've all seen photos with an accompanying caption along...

Germany's 7-1 trouncing of host country Brazil in the 2014 FIFA World Cup semifinals Tuesday registered as the most-discussed sporting game ever on Twitter , with 35.6 million tweets posted worldwide during the match, and generated record activity on Facebook . The blowout set a Twitter record for posts per second, as Deutschland's fifth goal in the 29th minute by Sami Khedira produced 580,166 tweets per minute. By comparison,...

Roy Michael McDonough took his own life April 6, 2012, at the age of 35. The former Chicagoan had moved to Seattle two years earlier to pursue his dream job. His sister, Terry McDonough, said the family had no idea he was struggling. "His depression and whatnot just got the better of him out there, and we didn't know it," she said. A gregarious person, Roy McDonough made friends easily. He connected with many of them on Facebook and prodigiously shared photos on...

"You learn to be your best self by sometimes being your worst self. " Who said that first? As far as I know, I did, and I said it for the first time Tuesday, the day I decided to run a little experiment in misattribution in the quote-happy land of Facebook. I made up a "quote" that offered a little bit of Oprah-era uplift. I attributed it to 19th-century English poet William Wordsworth. I posted it. And I waited for someone to tell me I should have my college degree revoked.

When Patricia Masterson's boyfriend broke into her email account in search of evidence that she had been cheating, she was deeply offended by the violation of her privacy. The fact that she had, indeed, been cheating hardly seemed like a good excuse. She changed her tune 10 years later, when, married and pregnant, Masterson innocently spotted a text message on her husband's cellphone from a woman regarding a baby. Her husband said it must have been sent to him by mistake, and Masterson, sensitive...

Two years after starting the project and less than a month before its release, James Gunn has officially wrapped post-production on " Guardians of the Galaxy ." Gunn announced the news on Facebook and tweeted that he's now passing the Marvel baton to Peyton Reed, who will begin shooting "Ant-Man" within the next few months. @MrPeytonReed Take this baton, my friend! :) -- James Gunn (@JamesGunn) July 7, 2014 Gunn described the process as...

I received an intriguing e-mail Monday morning from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. The center does an annual survey on teen attitudes toward drinking and drug use. This year's report found something new and alarming: Teens who regularly use Facebook and Myspace are much more likely than social network avoiders to drink, smoke and use marijuana. One possible reason for that, the report concluded, is that teens who use social media are...

One team of researchers assessing the risks of electronic cigarettes is counting the puffs taken by volunteer "vapers. " Another will comb Facebook for posts on how people are tinkering with e-cigarettes to make the devices deliver extra nicotine. A third is building a virtual convenience store for 13-to-17-year-olds, measuring how e-cigarette displays and price promotions influence whether minors buy the increasingly popular devices. The U.S. Food and Drug...

What was going on in your Facebook news feed the week of Jan. 11-18, 2012? Birthday reminders, cat videos, crockpot recipes, baby pictures and invitations to play Bejeweled Blitz, probably, plus lots of current events posts were guaranteed to make you glad or mad. That week, Mitt Romney won New Hampshire's Republican primary, Playboy announced it was leaving Chicago, and Hostess filed for bankruptcy, prompting fears that there would be no...

In the article " Chicago Catholic parish warns about Facebook " (April 6) by Manya Brachear, I disagree with the church placing its thoughts on Facebook. I understand the Pope and the Cardinal have fan pages, but the church should not have a say in people using Facebook. I am a practicing Catholic, and I am also a user of Facebook. Facebook is a way of communication between friends. In the article, it says Facebook is the opposite of the Christian culture because it is a temptation.

Dear Amy: My mother has been using Facebook more frequently in the last few months, and I think that's fine. Unfortunately the majority of the pictures that she posts are of me. Her profile and cover photos are of me. I am not her "friend" on Facebook, but if I look up her name I can see dozens of photos of me all over her page. I really don't want her plastering my picture everywhere, especially if her privacy settings are weak and anyone has access to the photos. My...

The Sports Xchange Yankees' Rodriguez joins Facebook New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez is on Facebook. Go ahead, send him a friend request. "I just felt the time was right," Rodriguez said. "Social media has gotten so big now. " Rodriguez, who already has 716,000 "likes" on the online platform, has tried to keep a low profile in light of some embarrassing off-the-field publicity. But he feels Facebook represents a good way to interact with fans.

By now you have likely heard about this Facebook experiment, where the platform's data scientists manipulated the content you saw in your News Feed to see if it affected your posting habits. I think Jackie Chiles on "Seinfeld" had the right idea when he barked out his now famous line, "It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous. " All opinions aside, it's a reminder that your News Feed is under constant scrutiny, whether it's from Facebook itself or from your friends and subscribers.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 17 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc priced its initial public offering at $38 per share, valuing the world's largest social network at more than $100 billion. At that price, the offering would raise as much as $18.4 billion for the company and existing shareholders.

With many Indians worrying about the threat of tough measures in their new government's first budget next week, a Facebook post suggesting the finance minister might be pondering less earthly matters quickly roused anger Wednesday. Arun Jaitley, a key confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, published a message celebrating "World UFO Day" on his Facebook page, which is one of the main forums in which he publishes official information. "This day is celebrated to raise...

Oct 5 (Reuters) - Some U.S. stocks to watch on Friday: (For The Day Ahead newsletter click on http://link.reuters.com/mex49s) INDEX FUTURES INDICATE MIXED OPEN U.S. stock index futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street, with futures for the S&P 500 slipping by 0.1 percent, while the Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 futures contracts rose around 0.1 percent. ** ZYNGA INC, Thursday close $2.81, down 19.2 pct premarket The company slashed its 2012 outlook for a second time on the poor...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc wants its users in India to hang up on advertisers. The Internet social networking company is testing a new type of ad in the country that allows mobile phone users to click a button that calls a brand advertiser, immediately hangs up and then receives a return call. The return call delivers pre-recorded audio messages about everything from sponsored cricket scores to information about shopping discounts, minimizing data charges...

Facebook poking Craigslist's notorious "adult services" section may be gone, but if a Columbia University study is to believed, the prostitution industry is still thriving online. "I estimate that by the end of 2011, Facebook will be the leading online recruitment space," Columbia sociology professor Sudhir Venkatesh said. His study findings showed that 83 percent of the 290 New York City prostitutes he followed for a year had a Facebook page. Which is not nearly as troubling as the...

DALLAS (Reuters) - Facebook has removed some photographs of a Texas teenager posing with freshly killed animals she hunted during a recent safari in South Africa that had been criticized by users as inappropriate, the company said on Wednesday. Kendall Jones, 19, a cheerleader at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, set off a social media storm after she posted a series of photos of animals she killed, smiling in one picture as she hugs a lifeless leopard hanging limply...